Wireless mobile phones have become one of the most commonly used electronic devices. The reliance on wireless mobile services, whether it is for simple telephony, personal computing functions, or web services, is increasing exponentially. Present day cellular telephones use batteries that do not need to be charged on a daily basis. As a result, a cell phone user often forgets to check the charge level of the cell phone battery for extended periods of time. This leads to the battery losing all of its capacity, leaving the cell phone inoperable. The fact that the battery is “dead” prevents a user from initiating phone calls as well as receiving incoming phone calls when she is not near a battery charger or an alternative power source. Even in the most mundane and normal of circumstances, this sudden inability to communicate or stay in touch via one's mobile phone can be extremely debilitating because of the increasingly reliance and dependability on the use of wireless mobile devices. Thus, if a mobile phone runs out of batteries and becomes inoperative, the user is unable to receive or place any calls or even power up to receive and display messages.
Consequently, several mechanisms are in place to avert such undesirable situations. Typically, most handset devices have bars shown in the display section of the handset indicating the level of remaining battery power. However, the information is often vague and impractical. No percentage is indicated and there is no precise estimate or indication on the remaining battery time left. Even if some indication is given by an icon on the display, most battery indicators on handsets do not distinguish between talk time and standby time, which greatly affect battery life. In other words, if a handset indicates that one one-fourth of the battery life remains, the user does not know how long this translates to actual voice talk time or how much of standby time the handset has left.
Furthermore, indicators are displayed in cell phones warning the user when the batteries are losing power and have low capacity. Some display or otherwise indicate “low battery”(i.e., low capacity) warnings and/or a battery's capacity level, or even flash the battery icon in the device display. Others even provide a more invasive type of warning such as continuous warning tone. These existing solutions fail to enable users to actively take charge of how to best use the remaining power and manage power resources in order to optimize battery life.
Additionally, wireless handsets are being designed to operate as multi-mode phones. Depending on the operational mode, the battery power that is consumed can vary substantially. By way of example and not of limitation, if a phone is CDMA enabled and WLAN enabled, the remaining battery time in the CDMA mode is longer than the remaining battery time in the WLAN mode, however, this fact is not communicated to the user.